Paul Smith <psm...@gnu.org> writes: > Aha! > > I am not familiar with automake's development model, but in general for > all GNU packages, at least: > > The bootstrap script is for users who are checking the code out of a > source control facility like Git or CVS, and building that way. For > those people, they are expected to have ALL the developer tools such as > makeinfo etc. available to them as part of their development process. > > You should not run bootstrap if you are downloading a source tarball > that is already created for you, for example from the GNU FTP site. > > A source tarball is able to be built without needing extra tools such > as makeinfo etc. precisely *because* the person who created the source > tarball had all those tools and ran the bootstrap script already, so > you don't need to.
Yeah, usually running ./bootstrap (or autoreconf -fvi manually which seems more common) in a tarball will often cause breakages with cryptic error messages. I think it is best to avoid doing that. Collin
